First Comes Baby
by inalasahl
Summary: Jayne and Inara know how to survive.


**Acknowledgements:** Thanks muchly to sffan for the beta. 

**Author's Note:**

I wrote this for the NSP ficathon.

**Disclaimer:** The characters and world of Firefly belong to Mutant Enemy, Twentieth Century FOX, Universal Studios, Joss Whedon and a bunch of other people I don't know.

Jayne growls, pointedly gesturing at the timepiece. Inara straightens and thanks the models as they put their clothes back on. She's weary, but long habit keeps her from rubbing her eyes. Her lectures are always full and run long with questions. She still, after all this time, has not learned to turn people away, telling them to wait for another day.

She hears one of the students ask another about Jayne, and smiles at the too loud answer. "They say she lived on a pirate ship and —"

It's silly and romantic and she encourages it, because the mystique brings in extra clients, more money and the semi-protection of a teaching spot at a Companion house.

She and Jayne need that right now.

* * *

Jayne groans as he wakes, the proximity alarm blaring all around him. He can't quite remember why he'd fallen asleep underneath two crates or why his arms feel like jelly as he pushes them off. Mal's dead body on the floor of the cargo bay wakes him up right quick. They'd been boarded. He remembered Zoe's voice cutting off abruptly as her warning had sounded over the intercom, remembered knowing she was dead. Jayne'd run out of his bunk, cursing. Mal had gone down before his eyes. River'd left the controls to fight, and they must have crashed. 

He gets patches and weaves from the infirmary, stepping over Kaylee and Simon's bodies. He closes their eyes, but just kicks the other bodies, the ones he doesn't know, out of the way. His head whips round when he hears the baby crying and starts to run, gun out, when it's abruptly cut off. He trips over River, sprawling, only nearly missing shooting himself in the foot. They'll have warning then that he's still alive, gorramit. He's not sure how many survived the crash, or if he can take them, but he sure as hell ain't letting 'em get Kaylee and Simon's daughter.

He thinks the crying came from Inara's shuttle and thrusts open the door to shoot blindly. There's no return fire so he cautiously peaks in. The curtain is drawn shut over the cockpit. The couch tumbled against it. That's when he knows. "Nara," he says. "It's me."

* * *

"We will expect you in two weeks then," Inara says before signing off. 

"He sound drunk to you?"

Inara closed her eyes. "No, nor to you either."

"Must be something wrong with them, to make little Kaylee choose this go-se ship over staying home."

"You cannot seriously be suggesting that an aging gunman and a Companion would be better parents than the people who raised Kaylee herself."

"No," he replies, wiping spittle from Henrietta's mouth.

* * *

The choice is taken from them. The Fryes never arrive. Their planet is suddenly quarantined when there's an outbreak of malarial fever. Two weeks later, they're dead of the ague.

* * *

"We got nothing," Jayne says. "How're we gonna take of Henry?" 

"Henrietta," Inara corrects. Inara never expected to be a mother. She's content to let Jayne do the bulk of the work surrounding the screaming wiggly bundle, but that cannot last forever.

"We have what we always have had," Inara says. "Ourselves."

* * *

Selling themselves and their respective talents gets them passage to the Core and a small stasis container. Jayne turns white as Henrietta's put into it. Inara feels wobbly herself, but they have no choice. No one can know about the baby.

* * *

They come earlier than expected, but she and Jayne are prepared, have been for a long time. Inara's made quite a lot lately, Jayne, too. Bodyguarding in the Core paying better than mercenary work on the Rim, though it's far less dangerous. It's still less than they'd like, but it's enough. 

The man is polite and gentle-voiced; she wonders if it is a requirement of the job. She knows he's no long-lost Tam relative, but shakes his hand firmly even as her other hand smoothes out her bun, discreetly pressing the tiny button on her hair sticks. "Oh, yes," she says, "Kaylee had a baby. She never said whose it was. Maybe it was Simon's." There was no record of the birth, Simon and Kaylee both hoping that Henrietta Frye would never be connected by anyone to the Tam fugitives. It turns her stomach to know that the Alliance must have dug them all up and done autopsies to know that Kaylee had a baby.

The sadness in her eyes isn't feigned as she tells them that the baby went to her grandparents. "I heard there was some kind of fever on the planet, killed the entire family."

They leave the school one month later, the shortest time they estimate they can run without the Alliance connecting why.

Inara grew up on Sihnon, a shining jewel in the Core crown. What no one knows, what she's never said is that she didn't grow up in a life of wealth and privilege, but in the servant class that supported it. She knows exactly where to get work, where to rent a home among anonymous underlings.

Jayne's the one who knows how to get fake idents and where to hide the money so Henrietta can get a real education when the time comes.

It's easier than they expected to settle into their new lives.

They bring Henrietta out of stasis once they both have jobs, working different shifts so that they never see each other. It's the only way to keep Henrietta at home.

* * *

One night Jayne stays out all night, Inara worrying so much that it's almost the truth when she calls in sick. When he finally comes in reeking of liquor and cheap perfume, she slaps him before she knows what she's about. "Our neighbors think we're married, Jayne! What if somebody saw you?" 

"Maybe I don't want to be married," he roars. "Maybe I didn't think it'd be like this, sharin' a home like this and workin'. Havin' all the responsibility and none of the reward."

It's the way he says reward that deflates her totally. "Oh," she says. "You, you did not tell me."

"Every day," he says, sliding down the wall, sitting numbly on the floor. "I gotta sleep in that bed, smellin' all of you and, and, never mind," he breaks off. "I'll get over the wantin'. I just never thought I'd be married in everything but the sexin'."

He's been a perfect gentleman, even the leers and innuendo he used to make on Serenity dying off after a time. She somehow thought his interest was purely theoretical, the way he'd appreciate any beautiful woman. "It does not have to be," she says, sliding her fingertips up his arm.

She's surprised when he jerks away. "I ain't a client," he snarls. "You don't have to pretend."

"I'm not," she says, taking his face her hands. "Jayne, I'm not. Haven't you noticed how much I rely on you, trust you? That's as much as I've ever known of love," she says. "Besides," she said. "Back when I was Companion, I was used to bit more regular, er —"

"Sexin'."

"Yes," she says. It's as good a word as any.

Finis 


End file.
